


Future Left

by authoresswithoutwords



Series: Left [11]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Fixing the Future, M/M, Seer, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-11
Updated: 2020-05-11
Packaged: 2021-03-02 23:21:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,806
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24135016
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/authoresswithoutwords/pseuds/authoresswithoutwords
Summary: This is how Silvia finally gets to meet her soulmate - and the long, painful struggle before it.//This story cannot be read without having read The Left Words.//
Relationships: Minor or Background Relationship(s), OC/OC
Series: Left [11]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1658788
Comments: 8
Kudos: 247





	Future Left

**Author's Note:**

> So, one person wanted to know the motives behind Silvia striking up a friendship with Harry. Well, here is your answer!

The first time she Saw it, Silvia broke down in tears.

But who could blame her? After all, she’d just Seen the death of her soulmate.

It was a glorious death, that was true. Glorious and brave and something that would be talked about, remembered, felt thankful for. One day, old grandmothers would gather their grandchildren close and tell them the story about that time they were caught in an abandoned old basement, left from World War II when the Muggles hid from their own bombs, and about the Muggles who now turned their weapons on those who’d lived amongst them for centuries in mutual peace and one-sided ignorance, and about the pretty young lady with fire in her eyes who ran to the bunker and told everyone to get out, now, quickly!

No-one would remember the not-so-young woman standing right in the middle of the room, frozen in shock, and that the lady’s last words would be, “Madame, you have to evacuate the area immediately because a bomb could land and explode any minute no-!”

Then, those old grandmothers would tell the conclusion of the story, how they managed to get out of the shelter before the bomb dropped, how they saw it fly down, down, down, how it hit the bunker spot-on, how half of it collapsed under its weight and the bomb dropped further until it landed right on top of that young lady who’d risked her life to save them all.

For young ears, the details of how the young lady was ripped apart into a thousand little pieces, spraying the area with fragments of flesh, bone and organs might be too gruesome, but their grandmothers would shake in remembered terror.

No-one would remember the woman, screaming in pain and loss and hopelessness so terrible that it sounded like she wished the bomb had hit her, too.

After all, there were too many women who screamed like that, too many men who broke down in hysterics, too many children wandering lost and orphaned and so, so hungry to pay attention to any one of them.

A scream like the one that tore free of Silvia when she first Saw that scene.

Unlike in the far-off future, such screams were not normal, even expected then. She was quickly surrounded by concerned family members and gawking strangers.

“Silvia, dearie,” her mother said, “what’s wrong?”

Silvia could only hug her close and cry and cry and cry all her grief out.

Determination ran deep in her, though.

Determination that she would save her soulmate.

Determination that she would change the future.

That was twenty years ago. Since then, Silvia graduated from Hogwarts with top grades in Potions, opened a potions shop, sold ingredients and finished and half-finished potions and dreamt of her soulmate every night.

From what she’s found out and could conclude herself, it would be quite a while before the vision happened. The Muggle technology was much better developed than anything the cretins dreamed of now. She’d been called “Madame”, but she only looked as if she was nearing twenty-five, magic making her grow older for seventeen years of normal aging and then one year for every two of a Muggle.

For her to be called “Madame”, she’d either look a lot older soon or she’d need to wait at least another sixty years.

And, Merlin, for her soulmate to be born about half a century after her! If she didn’t have her visions, she’d think she didn’t have a soulmate. Poor bastards who’d believe that, not knowing any better! But then, their soulmates probably wouldn’t die before they even got to know their names.

Silvia shook herself from her dark thoughts and returned her attention to the gaggle of Hogwarts students who’d just come in.

A year later still, a boy stumbled into her shop.

His clothes were cheap, his hand clenched around a Pauper’s Money Bag from Hogwarts, his eyes full of shrewdness.

This boy was a dangerous one, Silvia knew at first sight. He’d grow up terrifying, judging by the power of the curious tendrils of magic he sent out to scout her shop, and the spark of intelligence in his dark eyes.

And then, her magic and her Sight screamed at her, “Behold! Keep close watch, for this one is important.”

And so, Silvia watched Tom Riddle grow.

She was sincerely friendly to him for she liked him, his wit and his charm and the way he could hide his dangerously sharp edges so perfectly under a veneer of oblivious friendliness, but for the very same reasons, she never dared turn her back to him.

He grew from a boy with angelic looks – if he pleased to seem so – to a heartbreaker of a teenager to one of the most handsome men she’d ever seen. He never told her about anything more personal than offering his name when she introduced herself, but greeted her with a boyish smile each time he came to her shop.

She watched as he became hopeful, hopeless and lost.

Then, suddenly, he didn’t come in anymore to say a quick hello on his way to work and wasn’t seen for many years more.

He’d only reappear years later, and by then, both his handsome looks and his sanity had been lost.

Silvia would have mourned for the young boy with so much potential, had her Sight and magic not whispered to her, “This is how it should be. This is how our soulmate will be saved. Patience, patience.”

And so she watched on as Lord Voldemort rampaged through Britain and almost, almost came to power the way he so dearly wanted to.

And Silvia thought, “That’s it. He’ll become leader or emperor or whatever he wants to call himself and he’ll slaughter all Muggles and save my soulmate.”

And then, a teeny tiny baby slayed the big bad Dark Lord, and all was well in the world of Light Magic and ignorance.

Silvia could cry.

Silvia had to confess: In the beginning, she’d hated Harry Potter, the icon of the Light, the one to murder her best, maybe her only chance at saving her soulmate.

Then, a child stumbled into her shop, barely grown enough to look over the counter, absolutely swamped in those baggy clothes that made him seem even thinner than he already was.

He reminded her of those children she’d seen in her visions of the future with his quick glances and lowered head, those half-starved and beaten children who knew they could die before nightfall, and after nightfall doubly so.

He was most definitely a Mudblood, probably out with a teacher, come to gawk at witches and wizards and their way of life that apparently was so inferior to that of Muggles that it had replaced the old rites and traditions slowly, but surely, aided by that damned headmaster up in Hogwarts.

He stuttered as he asked for a first year Potions set, curled up as if he expected a hit any second now.

And it’s so funny that Silvia almost couldn’t stop laughing. A Mudblood in Knockturn asking for a Potions set? He should be glad he came to Silvia and not another shop where _he_ would be made into a Potions set.

Then, it turned out the boy wasn’t a Mudblood, but a Halfblood, maybe even a Pureblood. Silvia advised him to get to Gringott’s to sort that mess out when another customer came in, frightening off the poor thing.

Amused as she was by that nameless boy, she invited him to come back next year.

As she watched him scuttle off, suddenly, everything in her shouted, “That’s the one! That’s the key! He will have a weighty hand in the saving of our soulmate!”

And so she watched him grow, too, as she once did with Tom Riddle. To her surprise, that boy was Harry Potter, the one who once stole her hope away from her now come to return it twofold.

The second year Potter came to her, she told him about her soulmate, and he listened and looked at her with eyes that knew trouble with one’s soulmate.

And he was connected to Riddle, the other key for saving her soulmate, and suddenly, it made “click”.

Silvia laughed as she hadn’t for years.

Weren’t the two of them just a laugh, one with a soulmate trying to save her and dying for it, the other with a soulmate trying to kill him and returning for it!

And so Silvia watched, and Saw, as Harry encountered obstacles and was victorious and suffered and thought so little of himself.

Of him, she saw very little, him not being able to sneak away for a quick visit and her not being able to go to Hogwarts.

One day, she got the overwhelming urge to write a letter. She watched herself write and coat it with several potions, all meant to calm and bolster one’s confidence, then send it to Harry.

A minute later, a vision reached her, a dream of a little beetle, Slytherin cunning and a whole row of incidents following this one unremarkable incident.

The same urge led her to attend one of dear old Slughorn’s meetings. She said the encouraging words that lay on her tongue since she’d Seen the many futures where Harry suffered so much, the one where he took his life most prominent in her mind, and she didn’t even have to lie when she said that she admires him.

To stand strong still after all that’s happened to him…

Silvia would have laid down her wand and probably also her life if even half of that was her cross to bear.

The next years had little bearing on her, personally. She wrote a letter here and there, but otherwise, sat and enjoyed.

Enjoyed how Tom Riddle who used to be such a darling and Harry Potter who is such a sweetheart fall in love and rise to change the Wizarding World for the better.

And the next time she Sees her soulmate, her words have changed from those horrible ones she used to say once-upon-a-future to the ones that leave Silvia’s mouth upon seeing her, beautiful and so, so alive,

“Hello there, pretty lady – you are the most gorgeous woman I have ever seen.”

Because every single word that she hears should be a compliment, every gust of wind a praise, every breath a word uttered in amazement at her very existence.

She says them to make up for the horrible words she would have grown up with in the not-future, out of sincerity and in the hopes that her soulmate will be too distracted by gasping and unwrapping her soul mark to notice the tears in Silvia’s eyes, her mind in a future that now will never come to pass.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed this story! Thank you very much for reading!


End file.
